In recent years, the necessity of protecting personal information that can identify a specific individual has been much talked about.
As exemplary technology for protecting personal information, patent document 1 discloses detecting facial images in a video that has been captured by a security camera and input to a computer, and checking whether the detected facial images match any designated persons (for example, wanted criminals) registered in a recording apparatus. If a detected facial image does not match any of the designated persons, mosaic processing is performed on the detected facial image. If a detected facial image matches a designated person, rather than performing mosaic processing, the facial image is left as is. This technology enables acquiring information about designated persons and the surrounding circumstances thereof, while protecting facial images of people other than the designated persons, which are pieces of personal information that can be used to identify those people.
In the present description, information pertaining to an individual that can be used to identify that specific individual is referred to as personal information.
Patent document 1: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2004-62560
Patent document 2: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-301477